A Scrap To The End For Rivals With A Golden Link
Could the lives and careers of two former Wolves favourites be any more closely entwined than they are through the Premier League relegation battle?
Notwithstanding the points deductions and legal threats that have provided an unwanted backcloth to the season, one or both seem certain to go down with their clubs.
Rob Edwards’ ultimately disappointing return to Molineux yesterday left Luton precariously positioned in the bottom three, with Burnley pushing them with ever-increasing force from below.
Then came the home defeat for Nuno Espirito Santo’s Nottingham Forest against Manchester City today and the renewed hope that at least one of the latest trio of promoted clubs could survive.
If it were to be the 2023 play-off winners, it would be a remarkable achievement given that they had three weeks’ less preparation time than Burnley and Sheffield United and were surely years ahead of their planning by winning promotion.
Edwards cut an impressive figure during and after his side’s 2-1 defeat, his calm authority apparent at a fixture about which we can shed some interesting background information.
The last time Wolves had played Luton in a League game before yesterday was in a 3-2 second-tier away win at Kenilworth Road in March, 2007, when Mick McCarthy named Edwards as the visiting right-back.
And who should be playing in the no 2 role for the home side but Kevin Foley? The ex-Republic of Ireland international is now part of Edwards’s backroom, albeit not at first-team level and therefore not present at the ending of Wolves’ run of four successive home defeats. Both players had also appeared in the early-season 1-0 Wolves victory at Molineux.
Foley then played for Wolves in their FA Cup third-round defeat at the famously non-League Luton in 2012-13 when Dave Edwards – in attendance among the media corps yesterday – was absent for the clash with his former club through injury.
Edwards, top-flight football’s least experienced manager, had also been at Molineux in the week for the defeat against Bournemouth and seemed to be briefly drinking in the atmosphere during the booming-out of Hi Ho Silver Lining.
Then, at the end, after he had walked the full length of the Steve Bull Stand to applaud Luton’s supporters, came a rendition of Super Robbie Edwards from the Sir Jack Hayward Stand. The puff of the cheeks that followed that confirmed that this had been an emotional afternoon as well as a losing one.
“I was here for four years as a player and five or six as a coach and it’s a very special club,” he said later in his press conference.
The 41-year-old’s career is fascinating to watch and we wish him well whatever division he is next season.
